should God touch his heart, really and in earnest trying all day long to do every thing, little and great, in such manner as will please his heavenly LORD. How great, how astonishing the change! and yet this is what we must continually aim at, if we are truly to repent, and if our iniquity is not to be our ruin.

For mark how the text goes on. It is not said only, "Cast away all your transgressions," but also, "make you a new heart and a new spirit.” The same work, which in the psalm the penitent David prays GoD to accomplish for him, GOD HIMSELF, here in the prophet, calls upon the penitent to accomplish for himself. David prays, "Create in me a clean heart, O GOD, and renew a right spirit within me:" and God says by Ezekiel, “Make you a new heart and a new spirit." That is, the conversion and amendment of sinners is in some mysterious way both God's work and their work: they "work out their own salvation," because it is GOD that worketh in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure." And being God's work, it is compared *to creation: it is like making a world out of nothing, light out of darkness, order out of confusion. Our transgressions are to be put away, and all kinds of virtues builded up in their place.

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The mere hating our former sins is not sufficient, for that may be, as in the case of Judas, in mere despondency, for no good end in fact, it is what the impenitent transgressor must come to in the next world. Judas hated his sin, and the wages of it, when "he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple;" but instead of seeking CHRIST to be forgiven, "he departed, and went and hanged himself." He seemed in a sense to cast away his transgression, but he made no effort to form in himself a new heart and a new spirit.

But those whom CHRIST is guiding to true repentance, are learning to love HIм as well as hate their sins. They are learning to delight in His presence, to rejoice in the feeling that HE ever beholds them, to take pleasure in denying themselves, and putting themselves to inconvenience for HIM, as a mother takes pleasure in what she does and endures for her child.

To love CHRIST is to love holiness, purity, meekness, humility, charity; to hunger and thirst after more of His likeness, in these and in all other respects. Now this is a very great change from

the ordinary sinful ways of the world. It is not a matter of course; it will not come of itself.

Some sorts of transgression, it may be, do naturally leave men as they grow older; the desire of them naturally passes away: but the love of CHRIST, and the desire of Christian holiness, does not naturally and of course come in its place.

What must we do, that we may work this great work of God? Our LORD HIMSELF answers: "Believe in HIм whom He hath sent." Turn your souls and bodies away from your sins, and your sinful pleasures, towards JESUS CHRIST crucified for you, with a sincere desire to love and please HIM; and He will presently begin to grant you such desire. The very first endeavour that you sincerely make, for the fear and love of HIM, to amend your ways, He will look graciously upon you from heaven; He will come nearer to you, and be even more ready with His gracious help, the next time you are tried; and if you again stand firm, still again will His grace be vouchsafed, more readily and more abundantly; and so on as often as you do any thing,overcome yourself in any way,-for His sake: until at last the new heart and new spirit, which He gave you first in Baptism, is thoroughly awakened and enlivened within you; and your thoughts and imaginations as regularly rise towards GoD, as before now, too often, they have sunk downwards to earthly and carnal things.

And in this good course you will naturally turn, all along, towards CHRIST's Church, which is His continued presence on earth for our salvation: you will turn to HIM, invisible, in His Church, to her ordinances and sacraments, for help and guidance, as you would have turned to HIM, had HE been yet visible on earth. Do this steadily, and you have His own word for it, no past sins, no power of bad spirits, shall separate finally between HIM and you. Come to HIм thus, and you shall prove in your own person the mercy which He offers to all: “ wise cast you out."

He will in no

SERMON CCLXIV.

A LESSON OF HUMILITY.

FOR THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

PSALM CXxxi. 2.

"Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child."

OUR attention is drawn to-day to the virtue of humility, by the Church selecting for her Gospel our LORD's parable about those who chose out the chief rooms. This may naturally remind us. of His other earnest recommendations of that virtue: indeed we may truly say, that He has sown the world with remembrancers and tokens of it. Look which way you will, something meets your eye to remind you that CHRIST would have you think nothing of yourself; that all your wisdom, and strength, and glory, from beginning to end, is another's. The birds and flowers teach you who provides for you; servants waiting upon their masters put us in mind of HIM, who was come from GoD and went to God, washing His disciples' feet; a shepherd with his flock is an image of HIM coming down from heaven to seek the lost sheep; nay, the very disputes, the presumptions, the conceited and arrogant ways, of which the world around us is so full, may do us this good, that they may remind us of our LORD's rebukes to those whom He saw behaving conceitedly and presumptuously; if we see people crowding to the best place, we may recollect what HE said to those who chose out the chief rooms; if any person talk as if he prided himself on his devotion, we may remember the Pharisee and the Publican: and so of many other places. A

person who knows the four Gospels at all, can hardly look any way in the world, without seeing somewhat to remind him that

every one who exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."

But of all CHRIST'S tokens in favour of humility, there are none surely so plain or so affecting, as those which arise out of the comparison of a good Christian to a little child. Children are continually around us, and most people, whether themselves be parents or no, are not a little interested in them; it is awful therefore, as well as encouraging, to think that in every one we see a kind of manifestation of our LORD and SAVIOUR, a token of His presence, and memorial of His will. Whether it be a child in a cradle, it puts us in mind of HIM as the shepherds found HIM at Bethlehem; or in its mother's arms, it is an image of HIM when His holy Mother presented HIм in the Temple; or if brought to church, either to holy Baptism or afterwards, it is then a remembrancer of those little ones, whom He took up in His arms, and blessed; or if it be old enough to be taught and say lessons, then we think of the child whom He took and set in the midst, and bade His disciples humble themselves, even as that little child.

In these ways the comparison of the Christian mind to a little child is familiar to all, who know their Gospels at all; but the manner in which it is set before us in the Psalm from which the text is taken, is rather different from any of these which have been mentioned, and is well worth our particular consideration to-day.

For you will observe that it is not simply a little child, which the HOLY GHOST by the Prophet David holds out to us here as a pattern and figure of right behaviour in a certain respect, but it is a weaned child. The expression comes twice over in the same verse, so that we cannot be wrong in supposing that it is this which we are particularly to regard.

A child then just weaned, just used to do without its mother's breast, and to live upon other kinds of food, is a token and pattern to us of something or other which God would have us do. Nor is it hard to find what the lesson is to be here learned. Consider what the condition of a child is when just beginning to be weaned it is, in fact, just beginning to be denied what it likes, and to feel discipline; it has to go through an irksome process,

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more or less of trouble and vexation, every meal that it takes. By degrees it becomes used to this, and its little angry and fretful ways abate; and those who watch it carefully, with an eye at all like a mother's, may perceive it, before long, beginning even to manage itself, stopping its tears, and refraining from certain things which it knows will be most likely to bring them, and in many ways showing that it has certain struggles within, and for one reason or another is striving more or less to get the mastery over its own feelings.

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Now this, I suppose, is the sort of process which the holy Psalmist describes in the text, Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, like as a child that is weaned from his mother." I have used arts and contrivances to keep myself in order, like the instinctive ways which Providence teaches children to use, when they now cease to be mere babies, and feel, one way or another, that they must not, and cannot, have all their own will.

This, the Psalmist says, he did: and the Psalmist we know speaks in the person of the Body of CHRIST, the Church, and of each member of it. When he says, I do this and that good thing, it is not to be understood as though it were David, or any other particular person, who wrote the Psalm, praising himself, but it is CHRIST's voice telling us what He was, and what HE would have His people be. CHRIST here tells us that He would have us all behave and quiet ourselves, as a child that is weaned from his mother.

Observe now to what this comes. First, it seems to signify that at best we are but children here, and have need to deal carefully, and in a manner cunningly, with ourselves, in order to keep ourselves in any thing like proper control. We know how we manage children, how difficult an art it is, how much experience and thought it requires to do it thoroughly, so as neither to disgust nor spoil them; so as not only to get them to do what at the moment we require of them, but also to improve by degrees their general temper, and manners, and behaviour. Well then, the Psalm seems to teach us that we had need practise the same sort of skill in the management and ordering of our own thoughts and ways; turning our attention away, even by force, from those things which we know are apt to move us